Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is bombing in overseas markets as foreign audiences reject the studio’s woke, multi-racial retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale.
The Little Mermaid is faring especially poorly in China and South Korea, with Hollywood blaming racism for the movie’s failure to attract audiences in those countries. Both countries played in a key role in boosting the box-office fortunes of Disney’s non-woke, live-action remake of Aladdin, which opened in 2019.
During its first weekend in China, The Little Mermaid managed to gross just $2.5 million, far below Aladdin‘s opening of $18.6 million four years ago. In South Korea, The Little Mermaid made just $2.7 million on its opening weekend, versus Aladdin‘s $6 million.
Estimated international debuts for The Little Mermaid include:
Mexico – $8.5M
U.K. – $6.3M
Italy – $4.7M
Australia – $4.0M
Brazil – $4.0M
France – $3.6M
Spain – $3.6M
S. Korea – $2.8M
Argentina – $2.5M
China – $2.5M
Germany – $2.4M#TheLittleMermaid #BoxOffice— BoxOfficeReport.com (@BORReport) May 28, 2023
For its first weekend, The Little Mermaid managed to muster just $68.3 million overseas, far below expectations. Disney tentpole releases are usually expected to gross more overseas than domestically. But so far, the reverse has been true for The Little Mermaid.
To date, the movie has made $187 million domestically versus $141 million overseas. The movie has yet to open in Japan, traditionally a strong market for Disney.
The poor foreign returns could imperil The Little Mermaid‘s chances of breaking even at the box office. The movie is believed to have cost $250 million to make and would need to gross well north of $500 million globally to break even — probably closer to $800 million or $900 million when considering promotional costs.
Some analysts are predicting the movie will top out at just $650 million globally. Aladdin‘s worldwide box office take was $1.05 billion.
The Hollywood Reporter blamed the poor showings on “a racist backlash” in certain countries. A source told the publication: “We did not expect the racist reaction and therefore, for the picture to underperform internationally.”
On Douban, a popular Chinese movie review website, users rated the movie just 5.1 out of 10, according to a CNN Business report.
Movie review sites in France and Germany have reportedly also been inundated with negative user reviews for the movie, which is in sync with professional critics’ mostly negative take on the movie in those countries.
As Breitbart News reported, IMDb artificially boosted The Little Mermaid‘s user score after the Amazon-owned site detected what it called “unusual user voting.”
The movie’s unadjusted user score is currently a 4.6 out of 10, while the artificially inflated score is 7.2.
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